IELTS Task 1 Writing

You should spend 20 minutes on this task.

The bar chart below shows the top ten countries for the production and consumption of electricity in 2014.

Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

Write at least 150 words. (Most band 7 to 9 essays will be closer if not a bit over 200 words)

Overview: 1. Paraphrase the question + give more detail using the graph. 2. Give the most observable feature in the graph. *For high band scores think beyond just highest and lowest; often there is a more interesting main feature.

This horizontal bar chart depicts ten countries from across the globe which were the top producers and consumers of electricity in 2014; the data is given in billions of kWh. At first glance, it is clear that the USA and China were by far the greatest producers and consumers of electricity; in the second group, Russia, India and Japan used and made significantly more power than the other five countries which had similar numbers. 

Analyses – Body Paragraph – ***Before you begin to write, indicate some points for comparison (6 – 8). When going into more detail, China produced and consumed the most power at roughly 5K billion kWh, approximately 20% more than the second place United States. The second group in this list of ten is rank ordered as Russia, Japan and India, supplying and demanding about, or close to, 1K billion kWh, roughly a quarter that of the US and China. The difference between these countries electrical outputs and uses is about 100 billion kWh. The third group, or lower half of this chart, shows data which hovers around 500 billion kWh production/consumption with Canada at the top and S. Korea at the bottom. Notably, the one outlier among these countries is Germany because it is the only nation that consumed more electricity than it produced. 

Summary

In summary, all of these countries with the exception of Germany produced a surplus of 5% – 10% more power meaning that they are self-reliant in their energy needs.